The Beretta Family
(Sam.1:20-22,24-28;1Jn.3:1-2,21-24; Lk.2:41-52)
Today, on Holy Family Sunday, we are reminded that the family is a vital pillar of every society.
Indeed, the most joyful and enduring societies in history have been those that strongly believed in the family. Why? It’s because it’s in the family that we learn unselfish love.
Unselfish love is caring for others without expecting anything in return – even when such loving is hard, like when you’re angry, hurt or disappointed.
In today’s Gospel, Mary and Joseph are frantic because they’ve lost Jesus. But this doesn’t diminish their love for him. To their great relief, they find him after three days, and then they return to Nazareth where, as Luke tells us, he grows ‘in wisdom, stature and in favour with God and men.’
Jesus’ Holy Family is the model for our own families. They show us how we can love without fully understanding each other. And they teach us that it’s in the family that we acquire the wisdom and values we need for the future.
Today, let’s hear the story of another holy family, the family of Alberto and Maria Beretta, who married in Milan in 1908.
Alberto was a businessman and Maria was a home-maker, and they had 13 children. Sadly, 5 died from Spanish ‘flu, and another died of tuberculosis. But Alberto and Maria never lost their faith in God.
They were devout Third Order Franciscans, and believed that their first responsibility was to give their children a good education and strong moral and spiritual values.
They went to Mass every morning, and every night they prayed the rosary together, entrusting their day to God.
Their son Giuseppe said, ‘Before learning about faith from books or preaching, we breathed it at home. We touched it with our hands, seeing how our parents spoke to us, loved each other, lived the Gospel and practised it before our very eyes. They were extraordinary people, with great faith in God’s providence.’
As they grew up, several of the Beretta children chose to dedicate themselves to God. Giuseppe became a priest. Virginia became a doctor and a missionary nun in India.
Enrico became a Capuchin priest and worked for 33 years as a missionary in Brazil. He has since been declared venerable and is on his way to sainthood.
And Gianna, the tenth child, is already a saint. She had wanted to become a missionary nun in Brazil, but became a paediatrician instead, and in 1955, aged 33, she married Pietro Molla. [i] [ii] [iii]
Like Gianna, Pietro came from a large and deeply Catholic family. Shortly before their wedding, Gianna wrote to him, saying ‘With God’s help and blessing, we will do all we can to make our new family a little cenacle where Jesus will reign over all our affections, desires and actions.’
They had a son, two daughters and two miscarriages before their last pregnancy in 1961. That’s when a tumour was found in Gianna’s womb. Wanting to save the baby, she refused radical surgery and only agreed to a limited procedure to remove the fibroma.
Shortly before the birth, Gianna asked Pietro to promise that if a choice was needed, he should choose the baby’s life over hers. ‘I insist,’ she said.
In 1962, Gianna Emanuela was born, but Gianna herself developed a fatal infection that caused immense pain. As she suffered, she repeatedly prayed, ‘Jesus, I love you.’ She died a week later, aged only 39.
Pietro was devastated, and went on to raise their children himself. He was present with the children when she was canonised St Gianna Beretta Molla by Pope St John Paul II in 2004.
St Gianna had often wondered what God wanted of her. She prayed about it and eventually decided that God wanted her to be a wife, a mother and a doctor. She applied herself unselfishly to all three.
‘A vocation is a gift from God,’ she once wrote. ‘And our concern should be to know God’s will and to walk on that path, not by forcing things, but by being patient.’ [iv]
The Berettas became holy because their family taught them how to love.
As Thomas Merton says in his book No Man is an Island, unselfish love is from where true happiness comes. The more we give it, the happier we’ll be. [v]
And where’s the best place to learn this unselfish love?
In our family.
[i] https://aleteia.org/2024/01/17/the-extraordinary-beretta-family-a-nursery-for-holiness/
[ii] Of the unlisted children, Ferdinando became a doctor, Francesco a civil engineer, Zita a pharmacologist, and Amelia died in her 20s.
[iii] https://saintgianna.org/famoflife.htm
[iv] Blessed Gianna Beretta Molla: A Woman’s Life. Pauline Books, Boston, 2002: 71-72.
[v] Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island, Harvest Books, New York, 1955:3.